How Theresa May plans to reduce immigration after Brexit

LONDON — The British government is considering formally tying its industrial strategy for the economy to a new EU visa scheme that will aim to bring down the number of workers entering Britain by controlling access for “every sector and every skill level,” senior government sources said.

While no final decision has been taken on the details of the new system, ministers favor extending the regime currently used to manage immigration from outside the EU, one official familiar with the plans said.

With less than three months to go until Prime Minister Theresa May kicks off formal negotiations with the 27 remaining EU countries about Britain’s exit from the bloc, her government is under pressure to radically reduce the number of migrants arriving in the U.K. following June’s referendum in which immigration was the main issue for many voters.

May has reiterated her commitment to reducing net migration to below 100,000 a year, a target David Cameron’s government repeatedly missed. Net migration to the U.K. in the year ending June 2016 was 335,000, of which 189,000 were EU citizens.

The Home Office is under clear instruction from Downing Street that the new system must impose controls on the number of workers moving to the U.K. from the EU, the official said.

May’s determination to ensure there is control of immigration across the board appears to contradict comments made by Chancellor Philip Hammond and other ministers who have sought to reassure employers that they will continue to be able to hire workers from the EU after Brexit.

It also undermines the prime minister’s refusal to rule out continued membership of the European single market, which requires free movement of people across borders.

In October, Hammond suggested there could be carve outs for certain sectors of the economy, insisting there was “no likelihood” highly skilled and highly paid workers from the EU would be stopped from coming to the U.K. Low-skilled migrants competing with British workers for manual jobs will be harder hit, the government has suggested.

However, a senior government official said that while “flexibility” would be built into the new system “to meet the needs of the economy,” the government wanted to control immigration across the board.

“To control people coming from Europe is the principle we are working towards,” the official said. “Every sector and every skill level will have some form of control.”

The new system will be tied to the government’s long-term economic strategy, under plans currently being developed by the Home Office and Department for Business, two senior government sources said.

The move, ministers believe, would allow for a long-term approach to managing migrant numbers, heading off potential labor shortages which force businesses and public bodies to employ foreign workers.

The government’s proposal to link the new visa regime to the upcoming industrial strategy is a further break with the Cameron era. The strategy, billed as a more proactive approach to job creation than any since the 1980s, is key to May’s domestic agenda.

“What jobs will we need and when? That is the sort of question that we could be asking,” the government official said. “How many British workers do we need to train up to meet the needs of a certain sector down the line?”

Another aide said it was sensible for there to be “interplay” between the government’s economic plan and its goal to reduce net migration.

While the Home Office is leading on the new scheme, Business Secretary Greg Clark is also weighing in, alongside Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green, Brexit Secretary David Davis and Hammond.

The final decision will be taken by the Brexit cabinet committee chaired by May.

Fresh details of the prime minister’s plan to re-impose border controls on EU citizens could come as early as Tuesday when she gives a long-awaited speech on her plans for Brexit.

“No decisions have yet been made on our future immigration system but we are determined to use the opportunity presented by leaving the EU to take control of the numbers of people coming from Europe in the future,” a government spokesman said.

He added: “We are considering very carefully a range of options, taking into consideration the impacts on the different sectors of the economy and we will always welcome those with the skills, the drive and the expertise to make our nation better still.”

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Lucas

This is vile – does she want to turn the uk into the leper of Europe? no one skilled will want to come and the uk ends up totally cut off from the rest of europe – you cannot run a modern economy on this basis.

Posted on 1/14/17 | 10:22 AM CEST

fatbob

@Lucas

I think you’ll find that plenty will still want to come as they do ex-EU currently.

And there is nothing ‘vile’ about defining an immigration policy that suits the needs of the country, it’s simply common sense.

You cant simply roll up to border control in the US and say ‘let me in ..because I’m here now’.

And that is as it should be.

Posted on 1/14/17 | 10:41 AM CEST

M Muggeridge

British companies prefer to hire cheap foreigners. Even local authorities hire cheap foreign labour contractors. Supermarkets hire cheap foreign labour. In reality without Eastern Europeans there will be much higher inflation in UK. Even House of Commons foreign cleaners? Bit late with thousands more arriving in UK before April UK EU exit? BREXIT: British exiting Britain?

Posted on 1/14/17 | 11:07 AM CEST

Kate

so why don’t British companies pay these Eastern European normal pay??

Posted on 1/14/17 | 3:40 PM CEST

Tom Cullem

Hopefully, May will also quietly push through large reductions of immigration from Africa and the Middle East, before Anglo-Saxon culture completely disappears.

Posted on 1/14/17 | 4:47 PM CEST

lingon

@Tom Cullem: so tell us all, what is it that makes you feel so superiour to others? What have you achieved that is so admirable?

My guess is nothing. Just a sad, lonely person that failed misserably in life and that can only grow by trying to make people from other cultures smaller.

Being so convinced that your sucess is solelly determined by others (that you are afraid to compete with) really tells what a failure you are.

Being “Anglos Saxan” is the only thing you have, isn’t it?

How sad…

Posted on 1/14/17 | 8:18 PM CEST

Me

Haha impossible. At least half of immigration is non-EU and it’s over 100,000. The UK has an aging population and needs to import young people to have a decent tax base to pay for the failing NHS/social care, etc as well as take many of the jobs that Brits don’t want to.

Thank yourselves for over 40 years of low taxation and a terrible education system.

Posted on 1/14/17 | 9:40 PM CEST

Percy Granger

Tom Cullen: Many Europeans making your point that Britain will only allow new immigrants from India Pakistan and African former British colonies but thereby restrict all other continental Europeans.

Evidently your comment has been perverted to imply something else far more sinister. This shows clearly the social state of Britain today with many older generation immigrants voting for BREXIT to keep out the new Eastern Europeans taking jobs. Immigration controls desperately needed as Britain at breaking point as with NHS housing and rising crime rates.

Refer to more English people moving to Europe USA and Australia because of lower standards and manners in the UK today. DAILY EXPRESS as evidence of a nation in disarray and somewhat angry.

Posted on 1/15/17 | 9:02 AM CEST

Drakes drum

Lingon the troll! Try and say something constructive! Perhaps something about having the oldest , longest surviving democracy in the world, unlike some places I could think of. Nodding through the destruction of the nation state isn’t democracy. Watch out, your fellow eu citizens are about to be offered the chance to vote, let’s see which way they choose. UK leading the way to the exit perhaps

Posted on 1/15/17 | 9:03 AM CEST

Annabananna

Teresa May was in charge of immigration before being Prime Minister, and she allowed unfettered immigration from outside EU. She did nothing about it. Where I live in Spain, you have to pay into the Social Security for 2 or 3 years before getting any benefits, and even then, you can only take out up to a maximum limit.
When I left school in the Uk we had to work for 2 years before getting benefits. The Uk were able to use this method of deterring benefit tourism, but chose not to. It is not the fault of the EU, but of the British government that we have so many immigrants. They have always been able to control it much more than they did, because they know that our economy needs workers from outside uk to continue to grow. Unfortunately they do not say so because they want the leavers votes. However, we will see what happens after Brexit. I bet we still have the same amount of incomers in 5 or 10 years time, but of course, by that time it will be too late. We will have left the EU, and our economy will be down the pan, and all the Brits living in the EU will have been abandoned to their own resources, sacrificed at the alter of the Right Wing Facsists that now think they run our country/

Posted on 1/15/17 | 5:31 PM CEST

George

“Hammond and other ministers who have sought to reassure employers that they will continue to be able to hire workers from the EU after Brexit.”

“The new system will be tied to the government’s long-term economic strategy, under plans currently being developed by the Home Office and Department for Business, two senior government sources said.”

This is even better than I thought! No more skilled workers in the next European Soviet Republic!

Posted on 1/15/17 | 8:58 PM CEST

Andrew Goodwin

Pulling up the welcome mat is not the way to entice the high-skilled foreign workers May & Co. say they’ll want to get. The media, news and social, are full of reports of longtime, high-end professional foreign workers getting out of Dodge. Why should they stay when they have opportunities elsewhere to work where they’ll be accepted and appreciated? I flatly do not think that the 100,000 immigration cap will allow the country to import enough workers to support an ambitious “industrial policy.” (snort!) The UK is about to go from one of the world’s most globalized economies to one of its least globalized in very abrupt fashion. Having done everything possible to piss off all of the EU27, May will find the “negotiations” on the “deal” after Brexit to be short and to the point: Get out. No single market, no customs union. The day after Brexit, the UK will go from having free trade within the EU plus free trade with all the countries the EU has free trade with (31 countries, including Mexico, Chile, Turkey, South Africa and South Korea, plus others pending) to zero free trade deals. It will have to start from scratch. And the deals UK strikes will take a while to negotiate. They usually take eight to 10 years. Good luck, UK, you’ll need it.

Posted on 1/16/17 | 5:50 AM CEST

Ronald Grünebaum

Given that non-EU immigration is higher in numbers, is more often permanent, and brings more benefit recipients than qualified workers to the UK, modelling EU immigration (which often rather is working temporarily in the UK) on this concept looks pretty silly. But then again the whole idea of Brexit is a collective idiocy to start with.

Posted on 1/16/17 | 9:30 AM CEST

Roman

Makes sense. Why should Europeans be privileged over non-Europeans?

Posted on 1/16/17 | 10:45 AM CEST

V8

USA has same system preffering highly skilled workers and somehow US industry is useless, while Germany invites people to work in their factories… It’s not about immigration but uncompetitiveness and backwardness of industry in UK that’s why they lost car industry for instance.

Posted on 1/16/17 | 8:19 PM CEST

Ron Matthews

The article notes that David Cameron’s government repeatedly missed its target of reducing net migration to 100,000, but Theresa May was Home Secretary for the six years after David Cameron pledged to meet that goal “no ifs, no buts” and net migration increased by a third to record levels during that period with nearly half of the figure coming from outside the EU.
Given the need for immigrants to fill key worker posts, meet the need of business and the revenue from overseas students it is questionable whether Mrs May will cut net migration numbers significantly and if she does so it raises questions over why she failed to accomplish any reduction during her six years as Home Secretary.

Posted on 1/21/17 | 12:01 AM CEST

Peace and love

Its all very well believing in changing the fabric of a society beyond recognition forever, but what if as a Turkish official said recently we are pushing Europe into a holy war? what a nightmare all the people who have abused there fellow citizens for years promoting mass settlement will be total pariahs, they need to think very clearly where there beliefs are leading us.

Its all very well believing in massive levels of immigration into a cohesive society,but what do we do if as a Turkish official said recently we end up in a nightmarish holy war? the people who have spent there whole lives promoting mass settlement and abusing anybody who disagreed will be total PARIAHS !!! i dont say this out of malice i say it because its a real possibility, be careful believing in something just because its in vouge at the present time.

I think its very mean spirited of the chap slagging off the guy who loves his own anglo culture.

Lets see what we can say about you?
dreadlocks numerous piercings stoned out of your head, living in a filthy flat smelling of cat litter and tobacco, you have your Bob Marley and Crass posters on the wall ‘ofcourse’ and you have a once pretty girlfriend with a heroin problem her teeth all blackened now and falling out, you also have an elitist set of arrogant mates who are always stabbing each other in the back? GOTCHA!!